Panic shrieks through me, and I have to take a split second to confirm which of my bodies actually got injured before I understand what just happened. It's Evelyn Prime, my original body back at the cave! Evelyn Experimental is potentially about to free a giant angry space dinosaur, which maybe isn't my best decision of all time, but even more immediately is the sharp realization that I am getting attacked by subterranean acid monsters.

I feel it start to happen, my ancient enemy rearing its ugly head. As the fear of death fills me my heart beats painfully, my breath catches in ragged gasps, I start to feel dizzy enough to vomit... I'm having a panic attack. And you know what's fucked up? It's almost comforting to realize that, like an old friend from home meeting me to say hello. Sure, this is hardly the first time I've reacted with panic since I've gotten here, but this? This is primo, grade-A panic material because I am going to die. I hate this. I hate this! Why am I here!? Why do I have to do any of this!?

With a scream of agony, my body moves more or less on its own as I pull my shattered ankle out of the hole and quickly begin scrabbling up the hill as fast as I'm able. I'm not thinking straight, and I know it, but I take a step back and start shunting logical thoughts into two other brains, instinctively working to solve the problem. These things are diggers, and while they might be capable of digging through rock it's going to be a lot slower than digging through dirt. The hill is dirt; grass grows from it. My cave has no plant life within and is solid stone. That is where I need to flee. My three working limbs do a desperate crab crawl in the direction of my home, and while I can be pretty fast when pumping with adrenaline, having all these points of contact with the ground turns out to be a problem.

My arm smashes through a thin layer of dirt and grass and lands hard in another hole, where it is immediately doused with acid. It burns like hell, though thankfully I didn't break the limb this time so I manage to extract myself and keep fleeing. This acid isn't anywhere near as fast at burning through my body as that tree sloth acid was, but burn through me it does.

EP isn't the only me in danger here, though. Evelyn Tinkerbell may be currently unharmed, but unlike my primary body she's outweighed by the weasels nearly four to one. If that me falls in a hole, I'll be threatened by a lot more than acid. If there's a time to get her in the air, it's now. Come on, wings! Fly! Fly, damn you!

I jump, trying to get into the air. I beat my wings but even if I'm now more skilled than I was five minutes ago, I just end up back on the ground. I jump again, making it a little higher, and then again, soaring above the grass for a heart-stopping moment before falling all the way back down on top of another pit trap.

Despite my light weight the dirt collapses beneath me, and the fun, exciting fairy world I've been enjoying collapses with it, crushing me in the dread reality of scale. Clumps of earth I wouldn't even notice at my usual size smash into my wings as I fall, pelting me painfully as I ultimately crash into the ground half-buried in soil.

It's dark. I can barely see down here, but I can tell I haven’t fallen into a simple pit with no exits. It’s a tunnel. A crossroad between two tunnels even, each leading off into a pitch-black lattice maze of angry, hissing space monsters. At this size, they are not adorable wiggly trilobites, but enormous and deadly clawed predators. I hear them moving in every direction around me.

One of them hisses furiously, and countless others join in on the sound, advancing from all sides.

A massive crashing noise snaps my split attention all the way over to Evelyn Experimental, a body previously paralyzed for the few moments that have passed since the attack on my home began. Shunting her back into my physical awareness, I realize I have no time to be messing around with giant predators while I can't even survive ones only slightly bigger than my hand. I need to go back, I need to support myself. I take one last regretful look at the massive, dying beast, rein in my hunger, and start to sprint.

Hopefully that giant fucking monster won't hunt me down later for throwing all those rocks at it.

It took over an hour for me to get here riding Mr. Mooshi, but if I sprint back I'm going to guess I can cover the distance in ten to fifteen minutes. Is that going to be fast enough to help in my current situation? No, probably not. But I have to try, I can't be letting myself just do whatever while the rest of me is fucking dying. Evelyn Prime is one of the bodies in danger, after all, and there's a good chance that might mean when that body dies, all of me dies. A lot of hive minds in fiction work like that, so there's no way I'm leaving it to chance. Besides, let's say my original body dies and then the rest of me is fine. What does that mean? Are all the other mes still me if none of the original me is left? Who am I at that point?

Wait, shit, this is not the time for philosophy! It's time for running, you stupid fucking ADHD brain! Leaving a trail of pheromones so Mr. Mooshi can follow, I book it as fast as I can through the forest. I can't let myself die! Running at absolute full-tilt, I rush home.

...Heh. "Home." It isn't really one, but it's all I've got. Hmm... all I've got. What all have I got, anyway? I mean really, I seem to be an alien weapon or something, right? I'm a god damn supertech bio-lab in a woman's body, a multi-brained hyper-intelligence capable of being three unique individuals at once, minimum. I know everything there is to know about the entire biological structure of animals which just a few days ago I was certain did not exist. Can't I do better than this? Can't I beat a few fucking chitinous naked mole rats!?

What else have I got!?

ATP. Serotonin. Adrenaline. Testosterone. It's a common refrain on the internet, and I've heard it before: people are just sacks of chemicals, brains controlling meat mechas. It's half existential, half meme, poking fun at our fear behind that very real truth. I've always figured it was the case. I don't really see much room in the world for a soul, and certainly no evidence of an intrinsic purpose to any of us. It always felt to me like the soul is just a lie we tell to help convince ourselves that we are not a bundle of biases designed to avoid acknowledging its own meaninglessness. I've never believed anything else since I was a child.

I've been medicated my entire life. Missing a day of pills means missing a day where I can even feel like a person at all. I remember trying out a new drug back when I was little and literally going insane, becoming in a very real sense a totally different person. I would scream and throw things and try to hurt people for absolutely nonsense reasons, like I was in a dream. I still remember that, and I always will. Sure, they took me off the medication and I was 'normal' again. But where is the soul in that? Where is what I define as me if that something is so comically fragile as to be worthless without modern medicine? If the way I think and how I feel and what I do and why I do it are all determined by whatever chemicals float around in my stupid, disgusting body... what else is left for the soul to be in charge of?

The answer is “nothing,” of course. I feel and I understand every chemical in the sack I call myself. I see how they work. Reactions to the environment release preprogrammed compounds into the bloodstream which encourage certain responses, affect certain physical tendencies. Most notably from my current situation, I know that animals on earth react to danger by releasing adrenaline, empowering numerous physical attributes. It functions as a command from the brain to the muscles to go full tilt, consequences be damned, because shit has officially hit the fan.

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The use of chemicals, however, is instinctive. Uncontrollable. Normally, the body has to guess how much danger it's actually in, reacting to both learned and evolutionary variables. A person is not capable of peeking behind the curtain and enabling the sort of recursive self-modification that consciously altering their own brain chemistry would cause.

But I can. I can choose. It's so obvious now. I am a machine that can build and modify itself at will. I know every chemical, and I can use whichever ones I want. I can feel anything I want, care about anything I want, hate anything I want, love anything I want, and fear anything I want.

I should probably fear this capability more than anything else, if I'm being honest with myself. It is not as though I need to be consciously aware of every process that leads to every thought, and indeed I lack the mental capacity to fully comprehend my own motivations in their entirety. But the potential is there, and in this single moment of clarity, as I dash desperately to save myself from death, I choose to use it.

EE's limbs fill with power, every limitation normally instilled to regulate energy usage and self damage gone in an instant. My speed nearly doubles, though I will no doubt pay for this when the crisis passes. I shut off EP's pain receptors entirely, clearing my thoughts and forcefully flushing the panic out of them. Adrenaline pumps through ETB's mind, granting precious seconds of clarity with which to decide how to avoid impending and otherwise inevitable death.

I make a decision. Out of either efficiency or numb terror, I decline to consciously follow the exact physiological reactions which cause the decision to be made, simply allowing it to arrive out from behind the usual curtain. Perhaps I'm sentimental, perhaps the adrenaline is making me cocky, or perhaps I just don't want to fucking die, but I make the choice to abandon my prime body's dash for safety, turn sideways, and roll down the hill.

The roll prevents me from accidentally getting another limb stuck inside the ground, letting me line my body up on an interception course with ETB's pit. I have an instinctive understanding of where all of me is in relation to my other parts, and with my focus working on a razor's edge I shoot my hand down the hole, grab onto myself, and pull my tiny body back up to relative safety mere moments before the triloweasels converge on my winged self's position. Little me pops on big me's back and I scurry back up the mountain with forearms and knees flat to the ground. The wider surface area prevents me from falling into any more weasel-sized holes, although they do occasionally open up the ground beneath me to spray acid over my body. Still, I make it back to the cave in record time. The higher up I get, the fewer holes I encounter, until eventually I'm safe on the solid stone floor of my shelter. Even if they could open up a hole here, I'd easily be able to see it. And if those tiny weasel bastards want to crawl up on my level to fight me on the surface? I dare them to try.

Many tiny heads (or at least what passes for the heads of triloweasels) pop out of the earth near the mouth of the cave, hissing indignantly. Perhaps they hiss at me, perhaps at each other, perhaps at the world. But soon after they retreat back under the earth.

For now.

…

I just wanted to fly today. God damnit, I just wanted to fucking fly today! Is that too much to ask for? I don’t want to be some horrifying alien fighting to survive on a hostile planet, eating raw meat and plopping out copies of myself! I want to be Evelyn, catching bugs in the forest behind my backyard, posting on entomology forums, getting my ass kicked at Starcraft, making normal human friends and at most maybe watching a movie about terrifying alien death weasels! But now all of a sudden I’m just here and everything is terrible and just when it was starting to look up, just when I had something about this horrifying monster nightmare to look forward to, I can’t do it and then I nearly die in three different places at once!

I start to cry. Tears flow, wasting precious water, my hiccuping sobs probably alerting every horrifying nightmare in the forest to my exact location. Or so my brain insists on thinking, despite the fact that just a few minutes ago I was making a bunch of dumb airplane noises and nothing showed up but I’m hysterical and sad and can’t think straight and that’s just how I always am!

Except… I guess I can change that now.

I can feel it. Back when the threat was imminent, when my body was running by instinct more than anything else, that was somehow the moment when I felt the most clear. When I looked into myself, saw the totality of my being, and found nothing but a sad machine perpetuating its own existence. That’s… a bit number now, a bit less immediate. But it’s no less true. My whole endocrine system, flushing its chemicals around and about, it’s at my command. And as-is, it’s… inefficient. Almost insultingly so. Yeah, I’m panicked, shaky, sad, and useless, but I can clean that all up easily. A few endorphins here and there, and…

No. No! That’s… a bad path.

I’m injured, I’m in pain, and I’m coming off an adrenaline high because I just almost died. Crying is totally normal here. If anything, it’s a good sign, a spark of humanity still flickering in the monstrous body I’ve been given. Even if it’s inefficient or a bit problematic, I don’t want to become the kind of person that just shrugs off near-death experiences, and I certainly don’t want to be getting into the habit of fucking with my own brain during intense emotional meltdowns. That sounds like a quick way to drive myself insane.

Eventually, as I blubber and sob, my third and least hysterical body returns to the hill, muscles torn and burning from being pushed beyond their limits. I get down on my hands and knees again, crawling the final body up the hill to safety. A few weasels send spiteful acid sprays up whatever holes I crawl over, which sends searing pain through my still-growing EE body, devoid of exoskeletal protection as it is. Thankfully, though, most of the triloweasels seem to have left, and the attacks stop completely by the time I make it back up to the cave. All three of me are finally together again. Grass and sticks are all I have to eat, and tears are all I have to drink. Every one of my bodies is sore, exhausted, hungry, and significantly injured.

But they are alive. I’ve made it out alive.

I hope Mr. Mooshi makes it back okay.

Evelyn Prime’s leg is in bad shape. I’m no longer completely shutting off pain from that body, but I’m still numbing most of it because without that it hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Both my internal and external skeleton were shattered before I numbed myself, and afterwards I only fucked my leg up more by using it. My ankle is a wretched mess, my foot is at a completely wrong angle, and my joints are completely shattered. It is pretty damn bad.

I splint myself as well as I can with sticks and grass, but I’m an amateur first aid technician at best. Hopefully my body has some kind of advanced, self-correcting form of regeneration, or I’m probably never walking on that foot again. Knowing what I know about myself though, I probably have pretty good odds for that. Hopefully, EP will be up and moving soon.

I mean… hopefully I’ll be up and moving soon. Like, that’s my original body, my prime body. Sure, I came out of an egg, but it’s still the only body I had at some point so that’s… me. Right?

Ugh. I’m too tired for this ship of Theseus shit. It might not be a good idea to sleep here now that all these tunnel traps are everywhere, but I can’t think of anywhere better. At least the cave itself should be safe. I barely manage to keep my eyes open long enough to wait for Mr. Mooshi to return, watching carefully to ensure he isn’t attacked and safely guiding him inside. He sniffs, smelling my sadness and fear.

He sympathetically barfs up some grass for me.

I smile as much as I’m able, cuddle up to my moosh, and start drifting off to sleep. The sun hasn’t quite set yet, but it doesn’t matter. I can’t keep my eyes open for a single second longer.